


on embarcadero

by sunburst



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Explicit, Slice of Life, Strangers to Lovers, art student minghao makes me go feral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25635886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunburst/pseuds/sunburst
Summary: Minghao is a lonely art student in San Francisco. Mingyu works at his mom’s restaurant nearby and could use a friend.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 21
Kudos: 112





	on embarcadero

**Author's Note:**

> slight mention of cigarettes and alcohol  
> kind of inspired by the movie columbus
> 
> [Them](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECDKtcTU0AAx_Hl?format=jpg&name=900x900)

“There’s seats inside.” 

Minghao looks up and stares. The orange patio heater buzzes, speaking to him in tongues. 

There is something magnetic about the face before him, shrouded by the night. The funny tightness of the mouth, tired eyes, tense shoulders. 

As if he’s waiting, Minghao thinks, to be told off. Practiced ease like he’s correcting for something. Unnatural almost. 

Then Minghao realizes the waiter is expecting an answer, but still says nothing. 

“No?” 

Minghao drums the table, shakes his head. The chipped bright blue on his fingernails gleams. 

“Your call. Whatchu thinking, then?”

“Something with lots of color.”

“Scuse me?”

The waiter scrunches his nose. Although he’s wearing a faded black baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, his expressions are clear. Almost comedic in their candor. He reconsiders Minghao’s request when there is nothing more to be said. 

“Alright, well, I can try,” he says, sounding unsure. Then he laughs. His canines are pointed, gleaming. “Something colorful. Well, I’ll sure-as-shit try.” 

“Okay.” 

Minghao is back to reading the menu in excruciating detail. The English side of it, mouthing out the syllables in his head. Couples are sharing niceties inside the restaurant. Smells of meat sizzling, dark and oily, reach his nose. The waiter clears his throat, creeps his hand towards Minghao’s menu.

“I’ll take that.”

“Reading it,” he says flatly.

He sees the question coming and bristles, but the waiter has an easy soft grin and doesn’t say anything, just lingers.

Minghao ducks his head down and traces the edge of the laminated menu, the cool plastic slick and gleaming under his fingertips. His long silver earrings drag against his shoulders. He flicks his gaze up, catches the waiter’s eyes trailing after them. 

The slight smile grows across the waiter’s face. Then a call from the kitchen comes. 

He remembers himself and turns away. The rehearsed grace of his body disappears as he shoulders through the door and slumps under the green-yellow fluorescents of the restaurant, brushing past takeout containers and knocking his knees against chair legs without looking down. He’s broad in the back, and tall, but inside he seems to diminish into himself like he wants to hide. Minghao’s eyes follow the thoughtless steps, past all the customers hashing out their post-work angst and fears and telling jokes and taking shots together, until the waiter disappears behind the beaded curtain next to the counter. 

Silence in his head once more.

In his boredom, he flips his menu closed and takes his bag out from under the table. Sometimes Minghao brings this backpack with him, even away from class or studio hours, to wherever he chooses to wander on his weekend explorations. It’s a canvas bag, once white, now an off-putting grey. The bottom of the big inner compartment is gritty with pencil shavings, eraser nubs, scraps of colored paper. 

He flips through the past week’s studio sketches. In retrospect he likes the still lifes a little more than he had in studio, close up, zoomed in, every burdensome crosshatch speaking aloud. His eyelid twitches, reminding him of his recent lack of sleep.

He closes the sketchbook, turns to observe the streetcar filled with drunks trundling down the road, the distant, neon lights of gas stations and Asian supermarkets. So familiar, yet altogether different. The scent of it, the taste of it is new to him. Saturday night is dry and cool and he can see some stars. Always cold both early and late, even near summer. Minghao smells exhaust and the perfume of women walking out, hand-in-hand, from the bar next door. 

He checks his pocket to make sure he hasn’t lost his bus pass. After his meal, he will go home and sleep. Later, perhaps, he will return and ask the waiter for his name.

But not today. Not yet.

The waiter brings him his plate. As promised, it’s colorful; yolky, bright, simmering in red sauce. “Hope that’s okay,” the waiter says. He’s taken his cap off. His black hair rests floppy, unruly, rumpled with sweat. It’s cropped close at the sides, growing long on top, spilling into his eyes. He tongues his cheek, staring into the rising steam as if it will reveal his strange customer’s secrets.

Minghao says nothing but begins to eat, and makes a satisfied noise. The waiter raises his eyebrows.

“Good?”

Minghao nods. Then before he can pull away and overthink, asks, “What’s your name?”

“Mingyu,” the waiter says, smiling once more. The patio heater’s light plays across his eyes. “Mingyu Kim. ‘S my mom’s place, actually. I’m helping out a little, until— you know. Whatever.” He needlessly waves at the sign above them. _Kim’s Korean BBQ._ Then, perhaps because he realizes he’s talking too much and Minghao has been silent, asks, “You?”

“I’m Minghao,” he says, looking back down at the dish. He likes the colors. They’re easy on the eyes. Nothing complicated. “I’m a student.”

“Whatchu studying?”

“Art.” 

He points to the sketchbook. 

Without asking, Mingyu gently picks the book up. He flicks through, whistles low. 

“Good shit,” he says, his deep voice somber. Proper impressed.

Minghao takes the praise unabashed. He enjoys the way it has been delivered: an unbridled, uninformed appreciation. No criticism, no analysis. Nothing to further ponder.

A woman calls from inside the restaurant. “Shit,” Mingyu mutters. “So sorry. Gotta go.” He puts the book down and bolts before Minghao can muster anything else. 

Minghao touches the rough cover of the sketchbook where those long fingers were moments ago. Another streetcar inches past. 

He looks up and sees Mingyu Kim behind the counter, his face shadowed with exhaustion, smiling at yet another customer. Shoulders taut, holding the world up. In that tension, there’s a certain willingness for self-sacrifice.

  
  
\---------

This happens often. Minghao’s mother forgets to call back, caught up in all the mundane headaches. He’s fallen asleep next to his silent phone, jerks awake at five to the despondent realization that only three meager, weary hours have passed since he dozed off.

He stares at the glistening windowpane. Its pale bleakness reflects his drowsy face back at him. The bed feels too large. Like he’s moored in the tundra. He wiggles his toes, and the sensations come back piece by piece. 

When Minghao first learned he was moving to California for college he’d dreamed about palm trees and beaches. Instead, he’d been welcomed by the Bay’s endless rolling fog, houses squashed together like unwilling siblings, wet grass everywhere. 

He doesn’t really mind it anymore, though. He likes wearing too-big coats and thick-heeled boots even if he always gets sweaty by the end of his journeys. Sometimes he even wakes up early just to go outside and listen to the birds and the distant ringing of the bus. Shivering and watching his breath puff up and float away into the telephone wired lavender sky.

Not today though. Today, he tries his best to fall back asleep, but in the quiet of the bedroom his mind pinwheels. Tuition has been paid for the month. Rent and utilities. 

And his uncle’s hospital bills? 

Not his responsibility, but still, the unwelcome thought intrudes. He tries calling his mother again. No response. She’s on her evening shift, maybe. 

He tries to think of what classes he has today, what he needs to prepare for. Then with a start, he realizes it’s Saturday once more. 

The days have been blurring together over the long mid-semester stretch. It’s not close enough to any final project deadlines to pose a real concern. But still, the assignments come and go and time passes in blots of colors. Distinguishable only by where he wanders after hours when his mind is free to relax and take a breath.

He brushes his teeth, watching his reflection shiver, gooseflesh prickle on his arms. His three housemates are all asleep. The small apartment feels cramped and weary but he’s grateful for finding this white whale in the city: his own bedroom. With a door and everything. He doesn’t know the others well enough to imagine sharing a room. He keeps to himself, too busy to feel like he’s missing out on the weekdays. 

And he goes out alone on the weekends. It’s fine. He likes being alone.

Outside he tries not to think of his mother. The sky saturates, and the city slowly blinks awake. Buses are already on the daily move.

He walks faster, mindlessly, hoping sweat and body heat will make himself impermeable to the fog and the wind. A bike trills its bell at him; a friendly high school student, on their way to a weekend job, waves hello. There’s trash in the gutters, people on the ground with pipes and needles. A dog playfully wagging its tail, leashed to a telephone pole outside a cafe. A flower shop with every kind of desert plant under the sun. Minghao walks past it all, impassive, allowing his eyes to see the city as it is.

He realizes some odd minutes later that he’s wandered near the restaurant from last Saturday. Not so impassive after all, then.

It’s closer by foot than he’d realized. He glances at the street easier in the daylight as he ambles past the curved, cramped Edwardian style buildings. 

The bar is alien and silent. Next to it the restaurant slumbers. Up above the sign, a zigzag of rusted fire escapes.

He keeps walking.

\---------

This night, Mingyu Kim doesn’t ask for his order or try to take the menu from him. He’s wearing his old black cap again and straightens when he emerges outside and sees Minghao.

He smiles like he doesn’t know he’s doing it, but his eyes are tired.

“Gonna be our new weekend regular?” 

Minghao just smirks, catlike, pleased that he is remembered. 

“Something different from last time?” Mingyu asks. 

He shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

“You’re my favorite customer,” Mingyu says, scribbling something in his little notepad. “And I’ve only known you for a week.”

Minghao is served bibimbap, the green cucumbers peeking out from under the egg. It’s exactly what he needed, rich, energizing, comforting.

He comes the following three Saturdays, same time, without fail, and Mingyu chooses what he’s served every night. On the third week after he finishes his food, Mingyu returns with the tab and looks everywhere but at Minghao’s face. 

“You doing anything after?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“I got break in ten minutes,” Mingyu says, concentrating on the ground. “Just— if you wanna hang out or—”

“Alright.”

“Cool. Out back. There’s, uh, an alleyway. Promise I’m not a serial killer.” 

He’s nervous and his _s_ comes out softened by a slight lisp. Minghao likes it, with a fondness that surprises him. 

  
  


Next to the garbage can, Mingyu’s lighting up, holding a flimsy shot-sized paper cup as an ashtray. The buildings and scant streetlight throw shadows on his angular face. The bright burning tip of the cigarette glows on his jaw. He’s still slouching, and with it, he’s not that much taller than Minghao. 

He offers Minghao a second cigarette but is refused. Minghao puts his backpack down between his feet. 

“Share.”

Mingyu raises his eyebrows but nods. He taps the butt of the cigarette into the cup, inhales and passes it to Minghao, who winces at the smell. 

“Eomma would kill me,” Mingyu says. He exhales smoke through his nose. “She doesn’t like me drinking either or— or doing anything really. But I just need something. Sometimes. Once a week. That okay, do you think?”

Minghao exhales his own puff of smoke and coughs. He’s out of habit. In fact he never really had a habit, just a single pack of blue American Spirits tucked away in his drawer, bought the day he turned 21. Exercising the privilege of the sudden, arbitrary lifting of the restriction.

“It’s okay,” he tells Mingyu, handing off the cigarette. “We all need something. Sometimes.”

Mingyu ponders, looking up at the tired cream-colored walls before them. “I wish I didn’t. It’s not all that bad. Just…”

“You are allowed to feel like this,” Minghao says. 

“Right.” Mingyu clears his throat. “So, um, how long you been here for? I mean here in America? Sorry, is that bad to ask? I didn’t mean to—”

Minghao laughs at Mingyu and his reddening ears. “This is my second year here. I’m a junior transfer.”

“Oh. Graduating soon, then. I won’t ask you what you wanna do after. That’s the worst thing you could ask a college graduate.” Mingyu exhales, taps the cigarette into the cup again. The cup crumples slightly in his hand. “Sorry, fuck, now it’s probably on your mind. I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Just- just tired.”

Minghao reaches over and pulls the faded black cap off Mingyu’s head. 

Mingyu just looks at him, his eyes wide, his hair all staticky and haphazard. 

Minghao grins, smooths his hair down for him, so some of it shields those surprised eyes. Holds the cap loose, so Mingyu can snatch it back if he wants. But Mingyu doesn’t make another move.

“It’s okay,” Minghao says. “Easy. It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

They smoke in comfortable silence for a few minutes, until the cigarette is dead. The bar music is light and airy. Snatches of conversations and varying footsteps.

Then Minghao asks him how long he’s been working at the restaurant. 

It’s a sore subject, he’s sensed. But he likes working into people, and Mingyu talks like he’s been aching for someone to listen to him.

“Since I was little, really. Eomma moved here from Anyang after she had me,” he says. “My father was never in the picture. The way she talks about Korea, she’s glad she moved. Wanted to send me to some good sheltered schools. So we moved here.” 

He shakes his head, huffs. His facade has cracked. He twists his lip, looks awfully pretty even in the traps of his hurt. 

“You don’t like it here.”

“Well…”

“I get it,” Minghao says. “You grew up around something, and it feels like nothing.”

Mingyu huffs a laugh. “Yeah. That’s it.” 

“Well, then what happened?” he asks, urging Mingyu to confess the thing that has so clearly dug its claws into his soul.

“Well, you know. California happened. Fuckin mecca of the west, final frontier. This city is the city at the end of the world. Manifest destiny. Tell that to whoever invented painkillers.”

Mingyu’s been burning up his sentences quick and loud, but now his voice is also edged with something jaded. 

“Painkillers?” Minghao repeats, wondering if he’s misunderstanding. 

“Eomma broke her leg five, six years ago. Real nasty, pretty much shattered it. Needed surgery. They gave her oxys. They stayed. For longer than she needed 'em.” 

Mingyu glances at Minghao but flits away quick, embarrassed at his own openness shining like a raw scab. He lets out a self-conscious laugh and scratches his nose, perhaps trying to hide the sad little quirk of his lips. 

“Well, um, I didn’t, um, bother applying to college after that. She needed me here. With her.”

So there’s that tension, Minghao thinks. All in the name of filial duty.

Mingyu stubs the cigarette out on the wall. “Enough about me. What about you? Do you miss— do you miss them? Your family?”

They’re taking turns exposing their bruises. Strange, but it feels comfortable like they’re already used to each other.

“Every day,” Minghao replies truthfully. “But I’m grateful to be here. I’m grateful for…” he swipes his hand out at nothing in particular. “For this. A kind of freedom. I’m not sure.”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says. He jerks up and checks his phone for the time. “Shit, I gotta go back in. Hey, thank you. Um. I mean, it was nice talking to you. Minghao.” 

Minghao likes the way his name sounds in that raspy, earnest voice. 

“See you later,” he says, but Mingyu is already headed inside, and waves goodbye, hardly turning around. He’s gone before either of them realizes Minghao’s still holding his hat.

  
  


\---------

Often Minghao paints until dawn. Somehow his hands and his eyes coordinate the best at obscene hours, exhaustion running itself into precision. He’s just ruminating, nothing much. Shades of orange and black whittling away into negative space.

He glances at the cap on his bedside drawer, mulling it over. It’s been two weeks, and he hasn’t had time to revisit the restaurant. Midterm projects have crept up on him. He wonders if Mingyu is thinking of the absence of the hat. 

The absence of him, as well. 

His phone rings. It’s his mom. 

“Hi,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“It’s late. Aren’t you sleeping?”

“Working on an assignment,” he lies. He does have a big assignment to finish soon, but it can wait. “You?”

“At the hospital.”

He rolls the brush between his thumb and his index.

“Uncle again?” 

“Of course.”

“Mom,” he tries, “why is it only up to you?”

His mom doesn’t say anything for a while. On the other end, there is just static, and a steady, clinical beeping. He imagines his uncle filling up the hospital bed, and his mother, worn and strong, watching and watching. 

Filial and familial duty. It’s all the same. He feels at once lucky and guilt-worn for escaping the brunt of these things. 

“Take care of yourself,” his mom says. I miss you, is what she wants to say.

Minghao sighs and rubs at his forehead. “You too,” he says. Love you, he means.

  
  


\---------

That Saturday he rides up and down Embarcadero, the worn black cap in his backpack. Families feed seagulls. Tourists in double-decker buses snap pictures of the sky, the buildings, everything new through their point n shoots. 

He ends up where he wants to, eventually.

“Oh, thank God,” Mingyu gasps, clasping a dramatic fist to his chest. Really, though, his face is almost reassured. “Swear I was seriously about to call the authorities, file a missing persons case.”

Minghao slides the cap across the table. “Call it fate,” he says, “that I’m here before you did. Something to be said for that.”

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask. Guess I should wait until you order a main course, but you have to try dessert here,” Mingyu says, tucking his cap under his elbow. “Our shaved ice is the fucking best.”

  
  


Minghao is one of the last customers by the time he’s finished the shaved ice, savoring every last bite. Faint music pounds from the bar, people spilling in and out. 

The restaurant itself is still, peaceful. Just two college guys inside on a date having a deep conversation, a girl behind the counter, and Mingyu, wiping down tables. 

He gives Minghao a nod of acknowledgment as he starts on the tables outside. 

“If you could do anything,” Minghao says, scraping his spoon on the last vestiges of condensed milk. “Go anywhere. Endless money. What would you do?”

Mingyu’s face is shy as he scrubs with his rag. A pigeon coos at his feet and he doesn’t kick it away, just sort of steps around it. 

“Don’t laugh,” he mutters. Please, is implied. Minghao waits for the sudden fear of judgment to pass. 

“Make movies,” Mingyu says seconds later. He ducks further down as if expecting a scolding. “Stupid. I know.”

“No,” Minghao says, frowning. “Not stupid.”

Mingyu smiles at the table.

“I have this dumb fantasy,” he says, “of going to UCLA for filmmaking. Even though I don’t have an undergrad degree. Or anything. But I have this screenplay I’ve been working on, and I’ll fix it up and get an indie company to finance it, and I’ll direct it too. And it won’t make a lot of money but it’ll be my heart’s work, and people will notice.”

He huffs out a laugh and takes a deep breath. Shakes his head at himself. “Idiot, idiot.”

“Why not?”

Mingyu exhales like he’s expecting the question. The rag goes limp in his hand. “Why not what?”

“Apply.”

“Because,” he says, and resumes his scrubbing at the same time _Mingyu-yah!_ echoes from inside. The weight of the voice sags him down further. “Be right back.”

Minghao pushes the empty bowl away. He procures his bag, ready to leave, but hesitates. When Mingyu comes back out, he asks, “Want to go somewhere?”

Mingyu glances back inside, but nods. “Alright. But just for a bit.”

  
  
  


\---------

They take the Muni down Embarcadero, down the tunnels and the sinewy streets, watching the Bay Bridge rise from the fog, growing closer, like a close-up in a movie. Bicycles leaving wheel tracks on the dewy roads, street vendors and food trucks closing up for the night. 

They end up on a wharf, string lights twinkling through the gloom. Mingyu sits right on the edge of the sodden dock, mindless of the wet salty air, and Minghao joins him gingerly, looking off towards the distant shores of Oakland.

“Can I ask you something?” Mingyu says. In the darkness, the whites of his eyes gleam as he stares at Minghao. 

“Yes.”

“Do you think there’s anything that, like, ties you back to your hometown? Like— something tied so tight around your throat, you can’t escape it?”

Like you and the restaurant, Minghao keeps himself from saying. 

“My uncle.”

“Oh.”

“My mom’s brother. He’s been very ill for the past years, and it’s getting close. So she— she stays with him. She pays all the bills. No one else helps.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose,” Minghao says, “because they know my mom feels obligated. It’s her brother, after all. Over there when something happens and it all seems hopeless, there’s no admitting a lost cause. You just try and try and treat and treat and it’s more and more money gone, more and more hurt. More and more pain. Just— just delaying the inevitable.”

Mingyu turns away. He looks down at the dank, shallow water below. The contours of his face have gone harsh, rigid. At this moment, Minghao would sketch him in charcoal. 

“Delaying the inevitable?”

“He’s very sick,” Minghao says, letting his eyes close, his eyebrows knit. “They would’ve— they would’ve let her, um. Pull the plug. If it was happening here.”

“So…so you don’t want him to get better?”

“No, no, I—” 

“But you just….”

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “I don’t know what I want. Nobody does.”

“I guess.”

“Well. Actually, I’m wrong. You know what you want, don’t you? You just won’t go after it.”

Mingyu sits straight and looks at him once more. “What?”

“I just think….” 

“I can’t believe you’re lecturing me.”

“I’m not lecturing you. I just think….I just think you could do so much more. Make so much more.” 

“Do so much more than take care of my mom and her shitty restaurant, you mean.” 

“Mingyu, that’s not what I—” 

“You— you just told me you’re waiting for your uncle to _die,_ "Mingyu says. His voice breaks on the last word. “I think that’s the worst thing anyone’s ever, ever told me.”

There’s a sudden unwelcome prickle in Minghao’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice as raw as he’s ever heard it in the past year, “but not everyone can be like you and your mom.”

“Yeah, I guess not.” 

Mingyu stands. His full height is suddenly inconceivable. He looms, treading the night air, his eyes wavering feverish, a slice of the moon. Able to look, and nothing more. 

“I didn’t mean that,” Minghao whispers. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m too direct. I didn’t mean it. I’ll— I’ll go with you back to the restaurant.”

“It’s okay.” Mingyu won’t look at him. “Don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

  
  
  
  


\---------

Minghao comes back the next morning to apologize. Mingyu is counting coins behind the counter with vicious precision.

“Eomma didn’t show up after breakfast,” he says. Each metallic clink punctuates his words. In the broad daylight his healthy skin gleams, but there are half-moon shadows under his eyes. “I don’t know where she is. She won’t pick up the phone.” 

He slams the cash register shut and finally looks up. His eyes are being kept neutral with great care.

“Does she leave normally, in the morning?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says. “I know the usual places. Wasn’t anywhere.”

“Okay,” Minghao says carefully. “Okay. How about, we can go there again. How about— where else does she go? Not normally? Mingyu?”

“Um.” 

Mingyu’s breathing is shallow, on the edge of panic. 

“It’s okay. Take a breath. We’ll go find her.”

He visibly forces himself to slow down and think. “Right. Okay. The- the H&H fish market, maybe. Um, she likes— she likes the Wharf. Sometimes.”

They get on the bus together, Mingyu utterly silent. His hands are clenched so tight that Minghao is certain when he relaxes his palms will have deep red crescents imprinted on them. 

Minghao reaches out and grabs his right fist. He gently unfurls the fingers, then repeats the motions for his left hand. Mingyu just looks out the window at the faces and buildings zipping past, his worn eyes, his bone-tired mouth. 

His mother is at the H&H market. Minghao sees her first, her short bobbed hair red in the sunlight, a heavy bag on her arm, weaving through the crowd. 

He points her out to Mingyu, who exhales and runs forward. Minghao hangs back, turns around to give them privacy. He hears angry bruised words in Korean and drifts further away. 

When Mingyu returns his cheeks are wet. He’s scrubbing at them with both his palms.

“I’m going back to the restaurant,” he says. He sounds terrible. 

“Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.” He sees Minghao’s face and wipes at his pink nose, then tries for a smile that doesn’t really make it all the way. “Seriously. It’s fine! Her phone just died is all. She was coming back in an hour.” 

“Did she say anything else?” 

His smile drops finally and he dips his head down.

“She told me I worry too much,” he whispers. “Um. Yeah. I just feel— stupid. But I...I got really fucking scared.”

Minghao alarmingly feels a twinge in his own chest, looking at this boy so afraid of the world yet so desperate to join it. He wraps his arms around Mingyu.

“It’s okay. Hey. It’s okay. Hey, take the day off,” he says into the crook of his neck. “You need to take care of yourself. Value your own happiness. We can do something fun around the city. Or maybe you can come to my apartment and hang out. Even though it’s very small, and sometimes it smells like onions.”

Mingyu laughs brokenly and sniffles. “Alright.”

Minghao knows the train of thought Mingyu has just been sent on is far too painful for someone so friendly with self-sacrifice. 

Sure, Mingyu worries too much. Enough that he’s skipped out on college, job prospects, self discovery. All the new, alone things, the joys and fears of becoming his own person. 

  
  


\---------

“What’s your favorite movie?”

“There’s this old black and white movie called Alphaville.”

Minghao wrinkles his nose. “Alphaville?”

Mingyu laughs. “Why do you look disgusted?”

“It’s a weird name.”

“It’s a good movie! It’s directed by Godard!”

“I don’t even know who that is.”

Predictably, Mingyu looks scandalized. “Are you serious?”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I’ve seen Breathless. I’ve never heard of Alphaville, though. What’s it about?”

“Well,” Mingyu says, straightening up where he’s sitting cross-legged on the rug next to Minghao’s bed. A lovely brightness has entered his eyes. “Alphaville is this imaginary city somewhere in the universe.”

“Is it like Blade Runner?”

“No, it’s more like— I don’t know. It’s very, like, black and white and artsy.”

“Oh, I see,” Minghao says, his mouth quirking up. “You’re one of _those_ film nerds.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Mingyu laughs, and waves at the decor tastefully arranged across Minghao’s room, his canvases drying against the wall, even Minghao himself, all his piercings, his paint-splashed shirt, his overalls. “As if you’re not one of _those_ art nerds.”

“Okay, okay, fine. Tell me what Alphaville is about.”

“Alphaville is this city where all really deep emotions are illegal. You can’t feel love. You can’t cry. It’s all super mathematical and logical. It’s run by this supercomputer called Alpha 60.”

“Weird,” Minghao says.

“No! You’d like it. I can’t help myself, though, I’m about to spoil the ending.” 

Mingyu looks delighted when Minghao can’t help but giggle at that. 

“Alright. Only because you’re really excited about this.” And you were having a bad day, and being here with me in my cramped bedroom sitting on the floor talking about the things you love seems to be helping, is what Minghao doesn’t say.

“So, so like— so in the end, the only way they can defeat the supercomputer is by telling it a riddle that’s actually a poem. Because forms of art, like film and painting and poetry, are like— like representations of the individual self, right? But what’s funny about that is— you figure out that whole time, the computer’s been saying lines from Borges. It’s been quoting from a work of literature _the whole time_."

“So…the computer itself was a real individual? It just chose to be that way?”

“Yeah! Isn’t that crazy? But in order to save themselves and become real people, the citizens have to kill it. Even after coming to that realization.”

“I want to see it,” Minghao decides. “Let’s watch it together sometime.”

“Oh! Okay!” Mingyu’s cheeks have gone a little flushed. “Sounds good.”

“I want to know what your screenplay’s about.” 

Mingyu worries at his lip. “Let’s trade questions.”

“Alright.”

“Me first, cos I just made you sit through a rant about a movie.”

“Okay.”

“Can I ask about your mom?

It comes like a hard-knuckled hit to his stomach. Mingyu sees the smile slide off Minghao’s face and immediately overcorrects.

“Oh, s-sorry, I just— I’ll ask something else.”

“No, it’s fine.” Minghao nods to convince himself. “What do you want to know?”

“Um…happy stuff. Good stuff. Like, the last time you visited her?”

The last time Minghao had seen his mother in person was the day he’d left for San Francisco. That morning he had somehow gotten it into his head that buying her flowers would abate the whole situation, lessen the difficulty he imagined he was creating.

The florist closest to his house worked in a neatly organized room, white-walled and full of shelves lined with flowers arranged alphabetically. He had chosen a lily of the valley bouquet. According to the nice old lady behind the counter, the tiny, bell-like white flowers meant a return to happiness. A reconciliation of sorts. 

“I bought her flowers,” Minghao says softly. “As a kind of— apology. For going to college so far away. For leaving her behind.”

Mingyu says nothing at first, then asks, “Did she like them?”

“It doesn’t matter.” 

Minghao hooks his knees close to his chin and closes his eyes, remembering the way his mother had put the flowers in the vase so carefully, snipping a few stems short so she could fit everything inside, promising Minghao that she would keep them healthy as long as she possibly could. 

“I gave them to her. She kept them alive. That’s what matters.”

He opens his eyes to find Mingyu studying him. Mouth pursed, his eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“It makes sense,” Mingyu decides. “That she— she let you come here. She seems like a really good person.”

“She is.” The kind of person who would throw their own life away if it meant making someone they loved happy. “Now tell me about your screenplay.”

  
  


When he sees the city through Mingyu’s eyes it feels so alive, like a gentle hand, cupping all the people in its palm. Mingyu’s screenplay is about a bus driver who writes stories in a notebook while pulled over on Embarcadero, waiting for her next rounds. She writes about the people she meets and the ones she only catches brief glimpses of, wondering at the mystical details of their lives. The earthy elderly women with handwoven tote bags, the old professors from the medical school going out drinking together, the college students caught up in the in-betweens of adolescence and adult life. The simple and easy poetry of the every-day. 

Really, that’s what it’s about. Finding beautiful things everywhere in the world, no matter how small or subtle. Her girlfriend is always encouraging her to submit her work somewhere, get it published, but she insists she isn’t ready. They live in one of those cramped little Queen Annes together, and they have a dog. 

“I don’t know if the dog should shred up all her stories at the end,” Mingyu says. 

Minghao frowns. 

“What? Why would you want the dog to do that?”

“I want to make her realize that every story is precious. Before this, she kind of treats it casually. Like it’s just something she does for fun. She has to come to the realization that it’s important to her. That creating art is part of how she sees the world. Sometimes, like— sometimes you have to go through something bad, like the dog shredding up all your work, to come out on the other side and realize what it meant to you.”

“You’re really quite wise,” Minghao says. 

Mingyu shakes his head and looks away, laughing softly, almost trying to shrink into himself. 

“No. I just notice things. That’s all.”

He looks at Mingyu and feels something so warm inside of him. Like home. Like drinking tea at the kitchen table under the yellow flickering light at night. Something familiar.

“I’m going to paint you someday,” he decides.

“Are you kidding,” Mingyu snorts.

“No. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Only if it’s okay with you?”

“Of course it’s okay with me! Wow!” Mingyu laughs to himself, then sobers up quick as a page turning. “Hey, I wanted to— I wanted to apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“For what I said last night. Um, about your uncle. I was just upset. I think if I was a psych major, I’d call it projecting?” 

“It’s okay.” Minghao smiles a little bit. “We were both wrong, and right. It’s like that sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

Looking at him, Minghao decides to go out on a limb. He remembers Mingyu’s shy eager face when he’d invited Minghao to the back of the restaurant during his break. He wonders if his own expression is now the same way. 

“Listen, one of my roommates is at this house party. Mutual friend. He said I could come. Do you want to go with me?”

“Sounds fun.” Mingyu’s smile is brilliant white. “Let’s do it.”

  
  
  


\---------

They stay for a few hours. Minghao gets a little too drunk, but he has fun, and so, evidently, does Mingyu. They even get roped into playing beer pong, which Minghao is atrocious at but Mingyu is surprisingly very good, even though he almost knocks over a very full cup on the counter next to his elbow. He isn’t expecting to win, judging by his loud laugh when he does, head thrown back, golden under the dim lights. 

Minghao wonders if he knows what he looks like. How beautiful he is. The world is sweetly off-kilter. He sits down on the sofa. 

There’s another boy in the room who is also staring at Mingyu like he’s hung the stars in the sky, but Minghao finds that he doesn’t really mind. Because here Mingyu is, sitting down right next to him, so warm and present, pressing against his shoulder, slotting his head into the crook of Minghao’s neck.

“Wanna go back to yours?” Mingyu asks, so soft it's almost inaudible.

“Yeah.”

It's a short bus ride. They hold hands the whole way. Minghao's hand fits almost entirely inside of Mingyu's. Looking down at this, he feels something clicking into place in his chest.

“You liked that boy,” Minghao says, teasing, back in his room minutes later.

“No way.” Under the wash of the blue bedroom lights, Mingyu looks ethereal, reclining on the bed like a cat. “I like you better.” 

His eyes travel around the room again, at the now-familiar canvases and posters, but always come to rest on Minghao, sitting next to him on the sheets. 

His expression is heavy with something undecided. He stretches, his grey sweatshirt riding up on his stomach.

“You okay?” he says eventually. “You’re really quiet.”

Minghao is compelled to lean forward until both his hands are on Mingyu’s chest. He pushes him down, down onto the bed, and swings a leg around, straddling his waist. Mingyu just looks up at him and grins. 

Minghao’s hands rest on either side of Mingyu’s face. He reads each individual feature carefully, then studies the whole, like he’s trying to conceptualize a figure drawing. But he’s buzzed, and the air is very warm, and Mingyu is beautiful. 

He gives in and leans forwards to trace his lips against Mingyu’s temple, his tickling lashes, his jawline, the bridge of his nose. Finally lands on his gentle mouth, stays there for a few long, warm, dizzy minutes. Then against his jaw again, feeling Mingyu’s hands tangling in his hair, grazing the flutter of his pulse against his teeth. Mingyu groans and bucks up against him. 

Minghao forces himself to stop and pushes up onto his elbows.

“Sorry,” he whispers, his fingers smoothing Mingyu’s hair away from his face. “I should have asked.”

“It’s okay.” Mingyu is panting, his cheeks dusted red. He’s smiling, now, almost shy. “What are we doing, here?”

“What you want to,” Minghao says. “For once. Are you okay with that?”

Mingyu pulls Minghao down again by his waist, relaxing, boneless once more. He sighs into his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Good.” 

His hands move under Mingyu’s sweatshirt, pressing against the solid skin and muscle, then lower, under his waistband. Over the hard and soft angles, into the warmth. 

For once Minghao lets go of himself, forgives himself for how he’s breathing, for how his body is moving. Only cares about watching Mingyu’s flushed, sweet face, under all the glittering light and shadow, his mouth falling open, his breath shivering into unformed sounds. His hair splayed like a dark halo. 

His eyes, wonderfully, pieces of sun. 

Minghao holds him through to the end, as he shudders and says Minghao’s name, once, as a form of gratitude.

“You’re welcome,” Minghao murmurs, pressing his mouth to the corner of Mingyu’s trembling lips. “You’re welcome.”

“Let me,” Mingyu asks, and Minghao shakes his head.

“You’re always giving,” he says softly. 

  
  
  


\---------

Minghao presents the painting of Mingyu to him about a month later.

He’s sat outside at the outdoor tables, the canvas leaning against his leg, when Mingyu comes out with his notepad.

“Don’t have anything to order today,” Minghao says. “Just something to give you.”

He reveals the painting.

Mingyu flops down in the seat across from Minghao like his legs have given way. He perches the canvas on his knees and traces the varnished surface with the pad of his finger, reading the bursts of color, the shapes of light. 

When he looks at Minghao, he’s tearing up.

“You see me like this.”

“Don’t cry,” Minghao advises.

“I’m not.” He tries to laugh instead and hugs the edges of the canvas. “Oh, Minghao.”

“Let’s go to Europe together,” Minghao says suddenly. “Let’s— let’s rent a farmhouse in Italy for a summer and live off the land.”

Mingyu laughs, swipes at his face, and his face is so at ease. It’s the most peaceful Minghao has ever seen him.

“We’ll go to France next,” Mingyu decides. “I want to go to Cannes. It’s a childhood dream”

“Okay. And then, we’ll go to Belgium.”

“And then Hungary.”

“And then Iceland.”

“You can bring a travel journal and those tiny watercolors and make sketches of wherever we go.”

“You can bring a video camera, and make everything into a short film.”

They subside into a dreamy silence. 

“I'm going to apply to UCLA,” Mingyu says, then. "I told Eomma. I don't know how it'll turn out, but I'm doing it."

“Oh my god!” Minghao covers his mouth with genuine delight. “Mingyu, that’s— that’s amazing!”

“Hold on, I haven’t even done anything yet,” he says, but he’s flushing with pride. “What are you planning to do? After graduation? It’s in a month, right?”

Minghao is brought, harshly, back down to the cold granite specked pavement. He shrugs and watches his hands twist in his lap.

“I don’t know.”

Mingyu gives him a moment, his mouth pursing anxiously, his eyes blown wide. Then he says, “You okay?”

Minghao looks down at the table. He feels alright, so he tries. He’s been planning this all day.

“Yes,” he says, and it’s not so bad, he can do this. He looks up at Mingyu’s face. 

He can almost see the words stretching out in front of him like those words on the menu, crisp and black and so utterly obvious. 

Mingyu, I just wanted to say this year’s been kind of hard for me, but once I met you things got better, and I want it to stay that way, do you think you want that too?

“I just wanted to— I just wanted to say. This year’s been a little hard for me— and—”

He chokes on his words. 

Not because he can’t find them. In fact, they are a little too close to the surface, blurry the way things get when they are too known.

So is that thing inside of him. 

That nothingness he feels, when his mother doesn’t call back or when he wakes up so alone in the grey morning. Or when he walks down the street in the midst of people in pairs and trios and learns that he has, in reality, sacrificed many things, too.

Just like Mingyu. Perhaps they are really the same, he and Mingyu.

There is suddenly water dripping down his chin, water like the cracked bitter clouding of late-monsoon season. The rains may never stop. His throat is all closing up. Mingyu’s eyes go wide, and Minghao sees himself from miles away, as if he is having an out of body experience, because he never ever loses control, ever, and he’s trying so hard to get the words out but they won’t come.

He hears Mingyu say something, feels him press a napkin into his fingers, brush wetness off his face.

“I’m sorry,” Minghao manages finally, those stupid words, buries his face in his hands and tries to hide the spilled evidence.

He can feel himself shaking a little, all splotched with red, but he is powerless to make it stop. The only saving grace is that they are outside, where no one else is sitting, and he is free to let go, finally. 

“I didn’t mean to— I didn’t mean to do this.”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

“I just feel alone sometimes. I don’t know why.”

“Me too.” At some point, Mingyu has slid into Minghao’s side of the table, and now he pulls him in close. He lets his shirt front get soaked, feels the same feeling, and lives through it with him. “Me too.” 

Minghao’s body vibrates with the words. When, finally, the haze clears, he finds himself nestling into Mingyu’s chest, just exhaling and inhaling.

“I’m so tired,” he admits, ultimately. He’s never felt like this before. Or maybe he’s always felt like this, and only now has the ability to concede it. 

The dog has shredded the notebook. He has come out on the other side of it, alive. 

“I’m so tired of being alone.”

“I know. It’s okay to feel like this.”

He sighs, shaky, and knows he loves Mingyu, the same way he loves the city, the same way he loves to paint, and see the world for what it is, and find the hurt and the beauty, the unbelievable mercy of it all. 

“I want to stay with you,” he says, tiredly.

“Of course.”

“I’ll follow you. Wherever you go.”

Mingyu’s lips press to his forehead with an insistent gentleness. Minghao turns to look into his eyes, the orange flicker of the patio heater warming the air.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know, before I met you,” is what Mingyu says, and he doesn’t say what, exactly, is the nature of this great and tender thing he has discovered, but he smiles, and somehow, Minghao knows it, too. 

The call comes from inside. Mingyu ignores it, to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> luv these two soft artsy boys
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sunsburst) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/sunsburst)!!


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